King has makings of vice presidential candidate

AMES — U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, was without peer on stage Saturday at the Iowa Republican straw poll in Ames.

He connected with the Hilton Coliseum audience, largely populated with the state’s most active conservatives, in a way not even his close friend, congressional ally and Iowa straw poll winner Congresswoman Michele Bachmann could.

King lamented the debt, took on Keynsian economics, referenced Adam Smith, and characterized the economic-stimulus plan of President Obama and Democratic allies as a “giant chain letter.”

King inspires conservative Republicans who speak of him in passionately loyal terms you don’t often hear. They trust him as they do few others. There’s simply no one better at giving voice to working-class Republican anxiety and anger.

So it’s fair to ask: Would Steve King make a strong vice presidential candidate in 2012?

I raised the question with a number of Republicans over the weekend, and none of them dismissed it.

“I have no better friend in Congress than Steve King, and I just think the world of him,” U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, said. “This country would be blessed to have him as president, as vice president, is blessed to have him as a member of Congress.”

Months ago, Taking Note predicted that U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is the odds-on favorite for the GOP vice presidential nomination. He brings Florida and Latino voters. And imagine a Texas-Florida ticket with Lone Star State Gov. Rick Perry at the top, backed by Rubio.

That considered, King takes his share of assets to a Republican presidential campaign.

First, Iowa is a general-election swing state, and King’s enormous popularity in western Iowa, coupled with home-state pride in seeing a Hawkeye Stater in a VP candidate role, moves a key state into the Republican count.

Additionally, King is battle-tested on the national scene in a way Rubio is not. King’s a frequent cable-TV guest on Fox. But he’s confident enough to do interviews with liberal bloggers, too. He knows the traps and tricks of interrogators and is skilled at navigating such situations.

Moreover, he’s fierce and tireless and could take the fight to the Obama campaign in the Upper Midwest with a genuine just-folks language. King could hold the base and allow the Republican nominee to move to the center.

If the GOP has a southerner in Perry as the presidential candidate, King looks even more promising as a vice presidential contender.

One other factor: King has a long history of making provocative if not ill-advised statements. In the fall of 2005, King referred to widely disgraced red-baiter Sen. Joseph McCarthy as a “hero for America.” In 2003 he compared homosexuals to unicorns and leprechauns. In 2006, King suggested that iconic journalist Helen Thomas, then 85 years old, was ugly in a joke about radical Islam’s belief that martyrs will be rewarded with virgins in the afterlife.

We haven’t heard a comment of this variety from King in a long time. What he said about Obama on Saturday is fair game — whether you agree with it or not.

King’s rhetorical restraint or new PR strategy may very well mean he’s actually auditioning for the vice presidency, one well-placed Republican suggested when I noted the absence of incendiary statements from King in the last year or so.

Whether he’s angling for it or not, at the very least King deserves a look as a vice presidential candidate.

DENISON - Speaking at a Republican fund-raiser in Crawford County last month U.S. Rep. Steve King compared illegal immigrants to stray cats, say Republican sources in that county.

At the event, King, R-Kiron, joked that his wife recently had taken in a stray cat.

King reportedly then compared illegal immigrants to the stray cats that wind up on people's porches, say the Crawford County Republican sources who were outraged at the statement.

According to the sources who were at the King event, the congressman said that at first stray cats help you by chasing mice, so you feed them. Then King added that the stray cats have kittens and of course you like them because they are cute, but eventually the strays, which are being fed by you, get lazy, just like illegal immigrants.

One Crawford County leader called the Daily Times Herald about the comments and faxed a transcript of the comments.

"I supposed you heard what Steve King said," says the Denison source. "He compared illegal immigrants to stray cats that wind up on your porch."

The Daily Times Herald called two additional Crawford County sources who were at the event to verify whether the analogy took place.

"That is correct," a Crawford County Republican insider tells us.

This source didn't hear anyone laugh at the comments.

"Nobody laughed," the source said. "There were a lot of people who thought it was repulsive."

This is not the first time King has compared Hispanic immigrants to animals.

King recently went to the House floor to display the model of a wall the Kiron Republican said he personally designed for the U.S. border with Mexico.

King said the same tactic employed to manage livestock could be used with his border plan - and he made two livestock references in talking about the wall.

"We need to do a few other things on top of that wall, and one of them being to put a little bit of wire on top here to provide a disincentive for people to climb over the top or put a ladder there," King said in displaying his design. "We could also electrify this wire with the kind of current that would not kill somebody, but it would be a discouragement for them to be fooling around with it. We do that with livestock all the time."

Illegal immigrants may deserve to be deported. But they shouldn't be subjected to racist comments that clearly offend legal, hard-working people of the same ethnic background.

We owe the Hispanic people better than this. And we owe ourselves more, because we are better than this.

For years, western Iowa's agricultural economy has benefited from the back-breaking labor of Latinos, many legal workers, many illegals.

With that latter class, we winked and nodded and let them into Denison and Storm Lake and Sioux City.

They contributed. They built lives. They helped us climb out of the ashes of the Farm Crisis.

Western Iowa has known the score with what had amounted to a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regard to immigration.

Political leaders and the God-fearing, church-going everyman sat largely silent in Iowa as books like "Fast Food Nation" exposed the horrors Hispanics faced on the kill floors of Midwestern meatpacking houses. One national magazine even carried a cover story on race in Storm Lake.

At the time, there was no battle cry for a massive overhaul of immigration.

King is right about tightening our borders and penalizing employers who hire illegal laborers. Iowans are with King on this. If Robert Ray or Fred Grandy or Jim Ross Lightfoot or Terry Branstad were making those points, calling for precisely the same policies, they wouldn't have King's hostility, his animus toward Hispanics.

Within King's comments, there's always a question of motivation, a not-so-thinly-disguised rebel yell that paints us all in western Iowa as worshippers of the stars in the Confederate flag.

Let's get real. Within the span of a year, our congressman has compared Latin people to stray cats and livestock.

If we time-machined King back to the 19th century (realizing that if there were such a machine King would no doubt warp-speed back to the Crusades and skip the 1800s) how would you feel if English Protestants (who were here first in larger numbers) called German and Irish immigrants livestock or compared them to stray cats?

Would you ascribe any bigoted motives to that?

To give King a pass on his ugly use of race, his divide-and-conquer politics, is to dishonor the generations of people in western Iowa who worked to overcome the prejudices that afflicted many of the grandparents and great-grandparents of those living here today.

I heard Congressmen King's speech in Hilton Saturday as well and have listened to it on YouTube several times since. I have had the honor to listen to Congressmen King speak before, so his message and the electricity he created was no surprise to me. In fact, knowing he was going to speak is one of the main reasons I drove over two hours to the Straw Poll in Ames. Steve King defines conservatism, speaks honestly, acts on core principles, and fears nobody. Not only does Iowa's First District need a Congressmen like Steve King, but the entire House and Senate need more individuals who are able to articulate conservatism as clearly and as passionately as he does.